Van Gogh's best work certainly includes those canvasses he himself called paintings which were the result of his studies. A comparatively slender dialogue exists between drawing and painting in van Gogh's post-Paris oeuvre. Drawing was not a continuous daily activity but there were times when, for reasons of economy or lack of materials, he was unable to paint. In Arles, where his drawing activity can be followed with considerably more detail than in Saint­Remy or Auvers-sur-Oise, three distinct drawing phases can be isolated. Van Gogh's first series of some twenty-four pen-and-ink drawings were made during late April and early May 1888 when he gave up painting. Later in May he drew a special series of seven views of the Abbey of Montmajour. In early June 1888, he spent almost a week working exclusively on five large finished drawings of Montmajour that were intended as surrogate paintings. In Saint-Remy only one such all-encompassing phase can be isolated: a fortnight in May and June 1889, when he produced a series of large drawings in the garden of the asylum. These were drawings that were quite independent of the paintings, and often produced in distinct phases.

Shared motifs in drawing and painting were sometimes used to explore a new subject but ultimately the two re­mained distinct. Even though van Gogh spent the first month of his stay at Saint-Remy confined to working in the asylum garden, the motifs of paintings and drawings never coincide. Immediately upon arrival in Auvers-sur-Oise, however, van Gogh made four drawings, three of which are closely related to paintings. Yet in all three cases they too are separate recordings. Their fascination lies in comparing the variations that ensue from a slight shift in vantage-point and a differently proportioned format.

A third category is those paintings that were definitely made from drawings. One example is the early drawing Path through a Field with Willows which became the working model for the studio-made paintings in Aries. A reversal of this category also exists, forming another. Making drawings and watercolours from his paintings was very much his own idea. Other contemporary artists might repro­duce their paintings as etchings (Manet) but not as progress reports (to Theo) or as exchanges of gifts between artist friends.

Van Gogh always distinguished be­tween a croquis hatif a quick sketch from nature, and a more deliberately conceived and executed drawing. He rarely ex­pressed a value judgment on them.

Of his contemporary drawings van Gogh said little. But then it is doubtful that he ever saw a drawing by Cezanne or one of Seurat's conte crayon drawings or Degas's charcoal and chalk drawings. The most intriguing aspect lies in those cases where there is not a one-to-one relationship, but where margins of deviation and difference, in composition, surface, and stroke, constitute the enigmatic centre of the painting drawing dialectic.

The process of gradual development, of successes, of setbacks, can be most clearly seen from the surviving drawings themselves. He was constantly aware of the conflict between the careful preparations for the construction of a composi­tion, on the one hand, and the drawing speed he regarded as desirable on the other. In his pointillist phase in Paris, for example, this quickly led him to replace the minute dots of colours in his paintings by much more rhythmical and longer, more briskly applied strokes of paint. Van Gogh was explicitly interested in the effects of colours placed side by side in the form of dots but did not have the patience to accept the inevitable slowness this involves. He is the artist of the flowing movement. Concentration on minutiae was not in his nature.

Van Gogh liked to work with several materials (which might include combinations of watercolour, ink, Italian chalk, lithographic chalk, charcoal, pencil, black chalk). By using this mixed technique he was able to compensate for any missing or adverse properties of one material by introducing others. This procedure was more the rule than the exception with van Gogh, so that the mixed techniques' group must be regarded as the one which includes the vast majority of his drawings. Particularly in van Gogh's first years as an artist, the pen drawing was almost always preceded by a pencil sketch which was often developed into a complete drawing. He next worked up the drawing with ink, possibly supplemented with other materials. It is striking to note that the use of pencil in the Dutch pen drawings is functional; it contributes to the chiaroscuro effect. In his French pen drawings, on the other hand, pencil was only an aid with which a rough preliminary sketch was made.

The subjects of his figures were people first, not men or women. He had much hope for humanity which he did not re­nounce. The prolific character of his artistic output came from the energy of a calling, as he wrote, to '...succeed in creating a coherent whole.... His intended token of remembrance was not without its material side. Van Gogh also always loved to travel. He was often making plans to go and work somewhere else. Before he set off for Drenthe (1883) he had the idea to go back to England: ... I most certainly think I can sell something there more easily than here - that is so - therefore I sometimes think about England... But as long as I sell nothing here, then I would be making a very slight mistake about the timing if I did not have the wisdom to wait until I see even a beginning here....

The types of people and their stylistic treatment and the landscapes and the constructional devices which he settled for in Brabant became, like the motifs from his early life (churches, villages, skies), all aspects from which he could not or was unable to escape. Some of his group drawings (e.g. 'On the Beach at Scheveningen') reveal a passive, wayward composition, depressing in the lack of purpose; fundamentally static pieces of nostalgia trying to break through the mist to some social realism. The copies of Millet and others paid off. There are elements of Goya in some of his observations. In 'Almshouse Man with Long Coat and Stick' (Autumn 1882) the truth is in the turned-up shoes, the grimace, the hat, the lie of the clothes.

Which paintings did he choose to be part of his real oeuvre? Various types of information have been pieced together in an attempt to answer this question. The size of the canvasses, the thoroughness of his descriptions of them in his letters to Theo, the existence of replicas, the signature in some cases, whether or not he wanted to have a work framed or to submit it for an exhibition, his inclusion of sketches in his letters - are all factors which indicate the relative importance he attached to his work.

His determination to draw and later to paint was undoubtedly an extension of his thirst for self-knowledge. Van Gogh regarded being an artist as the fulfillment of his personality and he therefore wanted to profile himself in the art world with a distinctive and coherent oeuvre. It is precisely this aim which provides an explanation for his life-long fascination with series, since they would provide a better impression of his artistic skill than any individual work. His preference for dis­playing paintings in one-man exhibitions should also be seen in this light. Van Gogh felt that only by knowing an artist personally could one fully appreciate his work. Appraising the work of the painter Van Rappard, he wrote: in general and more specifically for artists, I am as much inter­ested in the man who produces the work as in the work itself. This attitude was apparent towards Millet, whose life and work was the measure of his own. While the aspiration to achieve a personal oeuvre was not unusual at the time, van Gogh distinguished himself by devoting his life to that aim, inspired as much by his own nature as by a Christian desire to serve mankind. How did this strength of commitment tally with his sexual persona? In the book, 'Young Vincent' (Allison & Busby 1990) it has been recorded that van Gogh believed that a man should not marry until he is forty as before that time he is too unsettled and does not need the fullness of love but wants to fulfill his desires. Van Gogh was advocating sexual freedom, yet he also speculated on his life expectancy, and wrote that he did not think he would live beyond forty. His obligation... duty... need to complete a certain work... was the real need.

He laboured under social perceptions of his time that are valueless to us. His suicide was carried out timidly, quietly, and it fell flat. It was no longer an action but a submission. Both his life and his work were an achievement. By dint of ingenuity and a clumsy persistence that was not devoid of pleasure, he renewed his basis. His inner progress was arrived at only through conscious convictions that coincided with things he knew uncon­sciously already. All that really counted was the conscious mind in which his true temperament would be aroused. What we learn from the centennial exhibitions of van Gogh's work is the technique of the path to a conscious relationship with it which thus becomes the simple outline of his nature.

Timothy Foster

Extracted from a longer article published in Art Monthly on the occasion of the centennial exhibition of Vincent van Gogh Paintings at the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam, and Drawings, Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo